Grassroots News & Progressive Views

In our house we much of the grocery shopping on the weekends, and this includes regular trips to the Hillcrest Farmers Market. It’s always a thrill to come down the hill from Washington Street to the point where you can see the magnificence of the market spread out along Normal Street. Typically there are more than 140 vendors, selling everything from raspberries to falafel to hand puppets. Much of the produce is locally grown and virtually everything is sold with the kind of pride that only comes from having a personal connection with your product. There are Farmers Markets throughout San Diego County every day of the week and even a magazine (Edible San Diego) that keeps up with all the seasonal events associated with locavorism. Here’s a handy list of those markets and their days/hours of operation.

This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Hillcrest Market. Besides being one of the larger markets in town, they have a robust web site, complete with a list of all their sellers and even a blog that shares impressions of the weekly event. I took a boatload of photos last Sunday that I’d like to share with you here. Bon appetit! [Read more…]

Does anyone out there remember the doomsday cult called Heaven’s Gate — UFO-believers led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, aka “The Two,” aka “Te and Do,” aka “Bo and Peep”? Heaven’s Gate cult members were ascetic “vehicles” on a journey to the “next level.” Their shared delusions and willing submission to authoritarian leaders came to a shocking end in a tragic group suicide. This happened in 1996. Only videotapes remain, documenting their stay in and departure from San Diego.

Yes, truth can be stranger than fiction. But if you think it can’t get even stranger, consider this: we’ve got another Hale Bopp scenario on our hands. This time it involves billionaire corporate investors with an anointed “vehicle” who happens to be running for mayor of San Diego. This could be the plot for a 3rd rate horror film but I’m afraid it’s real. Here’s what’s going on:

A group of of multi-million/billionaires — well-known for their anti-tax, anti-government, anti-labor, anti-regulation, anti-pension, anti-public, anti-environmental, pro-privatization proclivities — have targeted the city of San Diego for political takeover. Their goal is not greater efficiency or raising the standard of living. Their goal is to transfer the control, ownership, and wealth embedded in the city’s valuable public assets straight into private corporate hands. Their goal is a new world order. Their goal is to use San Diego as a launching pad. [Read more…]

As I have been aging, I have spent more time thinking about my Mother and Father. I will not dwell on my mother, because there are not many good things I can say about her. (After you read about my father you will probably say there aren’t many good things to say about him either.) Suffice it to say that my mother was a social butterfly; more concerned with appearances than substance. She was a pianist and she and her sister were Leonard Bernstein’s first music teachers. Her parents were immigrants from Russia and Poland, and my grandfather was one of the nicest people I had ever met. My grandmother had a mean streak – which was inherited by my mother – and not nearly as nice as Grandpa. My mother and father were very wealthy – more about that in a moment – and I had my own governess until I was seven years old.

We lived just on the border of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles; yet I was culturally deprived. I had never been north of the San Fernando Valley; east of East Los Angeles; or south of San Pedro.. I had been sent to Girl Scout camp on Catalina, where I proceeded to get seasick from the time we left San Pedro until the return. I was always left in the care of the governess or the maid. When my mother married my father, an immigrant from Budapest, she became a “decorator to the stars” and it was not unusual to have celebrities in the house daily, nor was it unusual for her to take me on some of her jobs to “show me off.” [Read more…]

In the furor of attempting to clean out my disastrously cluttered home office before school starts again, I came across a recent issue of the National Education Association’s magazine dedicated entirely to teaching Darwin. Before tossing it, I read some astonishing and depressing statistics about the high percentage of Americans who disbelieve in evolution (including, if I recall correctly, about 25% of those with a college education, and more than 50% of those without one). Mostly that issue detailed how teachers might use the mass of scientific evidence from a wide array of disciplines to make the case for Darwin.

That this case still needs to be made is in itself bizarre, of course, since “The Origin of the Species” was published in 1859. It can’t be accounted for simply by the many home-schooled children of fundamentalists, or by graduates of Christian academies such as the chain that unsuccessfully brought litigation against the UC system a few years back for not accepting their creationism course as a legitimate science entry requirement. Even before the right wing’s aggressive and sustained push to control local school boards, many public schools in conservative regions had been teaching evolution– as a thoroughly discredited theory; I vividly remember one student (she’s now a science writer!) from a small, predominantly Mormon town in northern California who was totally shocked when she came to UCSD, and learned that such debunking was hardly a universally accepted truth. [Read more…]

On his financial disclosure documents, Mitt Romney claims he retired from Bain Capital after he started work on the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. “Since February 11, 1999,” the document states, “Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.”

As we’ve learned over the past couple of weeks, Romney actually remained the sole owner and top corporate officer for Bain Capital until 2002, when he signed a retroactive severance agreement—one that continues to pay him $20 million annually, to this very day. His campaign’sexplanation?

This is nothing more than a quirk in the law. When Governor Romney took over the Olympics, he was not involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way. He was too busy working to make the Olympic Games among the most successful ever held.

Well, if you call owning the firm and remaining its top corporate officer “a quirk in the law,” then I guess it’s a quirk, all right. But it’s the kind of quirk that completely undermines the campaign’s and the candidate’s claim to have been completely severed from Bain as of Feb. 11, 1999.

The dark lords of MissionValley know what’s best for us…. Our daily newspaper says that opponents of the Jacobs/Saunders plan for Balboa Park are being “idiotic”. The paper featured an editorial yesterday entitled “Idiotic, Let Us Count the Ways”. The Editorial Board pasted that label on Councilwoman Sherri Lightner and Congressman/Mayoral candidate Bob Filner, D-San Diego, among others, for their opposition to the current arrangement. Questions about the process involved in approving the plan, its legality and its shaky financial assumptions, apparently weren’t worth considering by the UT’s opinion makers in Mission Valley as they pursued an agenda that is, at its core, anti-democratic and plutocratic in nature.

Opposition in the community was deep and widespread, with comments about the project running as high as 25 to 1 against. Are all those people idiots? There was considerable frustration and anger sparked by the perception that opponents were simply being ignored at every step of the way. It’s not surprising that everyday people started to feel like this scenario was simply a show designed to legitimize the City’s special relationship with a Very Wealthy Individual. Passions ran high, and as our reporter Andy Cohen tried to point out, some individuals –on both sides of this issue– may have crossed the line in terms of expressing their disagreement in polite terms. The fact is that hardly anybody disagrees with the kernel of truth at the center of this debate—that cars need to be removed from the core of Balboa Park. The question was (and is), how do we get there?

The UT-San Diego editorial made it perfectly clear that citizen input will be derided and disparaged in these sorts of instances. Good luck to anybody who dares oppose their grand visions for a shiny new stadium downtown or publisher Doug Manchester’s plans for mega development along the San Diego river—if they called people idiotic for speaking out against the Balboa Park plan, lord only knows what words they’ll come up with for opponents of their own pet projects. [Read more…]

There’s more than airport construction happening along Harbor Drive. The San Diego Maritime Museum, together with the Port and City of San Diego, are building a replica of the San Salvador—the flagship vessel of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo as he explored the west coast. The full-sized ship, which will be fully functional and historically accurate, is slated for completion by November 2013. It is an all-volunteer project. [Read more…]

The Irwin Jacobs plan to transform San Diego’s Balboa Park may be illegal according to the City Municipal Code. In her statements to the City Council at the July 9th City Council meeting, Susan Brandt-Hawley, an attorney who worked with the Save Our Heritage Organisation in challenging the project, warned the members that in supporting the plan they would be in violation of the law.

In question are two particular sub-sections of the Municipal Code. [Read more…]

Our sergeant was laying out the detail for the night. It was the late 70s and gay bars operated on the fringe of the community. In this particular case, it seemed someone from the religious right had complained about a bar called The Hut on University Avenue in North Park. The complaint was not the existence of a gay bar, but that the bar was running an afterhours “private” club with live sex acts as the main feature. Now if you are like me, you are probably wondering how this pillar of the religious community knew about the activities in a private gay club. But when I posed the question to my sergeant, he gave me the exasperated look you give a child who just does not stop asking, “Why?” His response was simple, “It comes down from the Chief’s office.”

The detail was relatively simple. One of us would be “wired” and would go into the bar and observe. If and when any sex show started, he would simply speak into the microphone and the rest of the detail would come in and bust the place. Guess who was assigned the job as observer? At least I was not bait this time.

He stood there, not more than 3 feet from where my friend and I were sitting in the French bakery.

She said later, she thought he was going to sing. We laughed at that afterwards. But at the time it was anything but funny.

Tall, a large build, African American, his clothing was casual and clean. And then you saw the cotton ball taped to the side of his hand, indicating blood withdrawn, or something given intravenously. A hospital bracelet on his left wrist.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced. All then turned to look at him. He commanded our attention, and his invitation was offered with some kind of bravado and respect.

His eyes appeared to be squinted shut — almost like a little boy who’d memorized a speech, and now it was time to deliver.

“I have just come from the hospital’s psychiatric ward….” [Read more…]

One of the nice things about finally having a date was going to someplace I had not been before, with a person I had not met before, and with a waitress that was already celebrating the Gay Pride Parade.

He suggested that we meet at the “FIESTA CANTINA” to indulge in their Taco Tuesday repast. Their menu for Tuesday was an “all you can eat” taco’s, featuring three different fillings, including rice and beans and salsa for $4.95. There was a one beverage minimum, but during Happy Hour if you purchased 1 margarita the other one was free. (Same with beer – buy one beer – the second was free.) [Read more…]

Sub-committee report #3 Now that we will create parking spaces in Balboa Park that cost about $58,000 a piece, and public beach toilets in North Pacific Beach that cost $100,000 per toilet stall, and recently re-modeled “art toilets” in Ocean Beach, I think we can legitimately call ourselves the “finest dressed city in America.” We are obliged to dress nicely and have nice bathrooms because we are eager to invite the world to our town to party. Being rich costs a lot of money, you know, and we would like to thank the pleasant and well-meaning golf and yacht club committees for their advice to the city council members on the subject of our attire.

Our local news television stations are also eager to keep the party going as they don’t miss a chance to throw up on the airwaves (in flash subliminal ways) 5 year old photos of standing room only at the beaches before the beach alcohol ban in 2008. The beaches have become much less crowded and mild-mannered since the booze ban, so I hope the revelers are not disappointed.

We’re beach people here, and wannabes, so we know how to throw a bash, and enjoy it too. [Read more…]

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The Safety Pin

Many Resistance Groups have stood up against the horrible events in Charlottesville and have reacted against the unacceptable response of our President. It is now our turn in North San Diego County to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in resistance to protest the white supremacist movement.